You can, and you must.

I wrote the following in early October, in the last few weeks of my pregnancy with Juliette. I've had a difficult few days home solo with the kids this week (nothing terrible, just regular mom/kid stuff), and it was good to read and to remember, so I thought it would be a nice way to end the year. We are strong and brave, and sometimes all that means is that we keep going when we don't want to, or don't think we can, even if the things dragging us down seem small or inconsequential. If in this moment they are not, then you are brave to keep going.

I hope this new year will be a beautiful one for you, and that you will be courageous in the face of long hours so you can enjoy the sunshine when you get a moment to rest.

xo,

Jamie

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When I was very, very pregnant with Charlie--in the very last months, when my body was literally aching with the sheer weight of him--I remember waking up in the mornings honestly thinking:

I cannot do this for one more day.

I am small, and he was big. I had put on 30+ pounds, which for a person my height and weight was a massive body weight increase--about 26% of my pre-pregnancy weight--and most of it (48 inches to my 58 inches in height) was around my middle. I was in a constant and wearying amount of pain: I pulled an over-taut muscle in my side when I laughed one day and couldn't bend for the next three, my joints shuddered against climbing stairs, I had to get on all fours and grit my teeth to push my tiny weighted down body up off the floor. I confessed to one of my friends in the final days of that pregnancy that I had completely given up on picking almost-2-year-old Gracie's toys up off the floor, because it just hurt too much to bother.

It was a difficult pregnancy. Trying. Humbling. So humbling. There were plenty of tears, discouragement, and doubts. There were frantic moments of researching what might happen if he were too big to be born naturally--or, worse, if he got stuck. There was fear and powerless waiting and a longing for strength, peace, and normalcy.

And at some point I told my Father in Heaven the very thought I told you above: I need this baby to be born. I need this pregnancy to be over. I cannot do this for one more day.

And His answer to me then, a thought clearly enunciated in my mind, was simple and pure:

You can, and you must.

Gracie, a polite 7lbs 12oz, was born early, at thirty-eight weeks. So every day after that 38-week-mark that I remained hugely pregnant with Charlie was endlessly long. I went in for several doctor's appointments determined to be granted an induction--but each time I felt constrained. He wasn't ready. It wasn't time. I had to wait.

So I did.

I don't know why.

He was born a few days after his December 10th due date, in a natural (non-induced, but quite epidural-ed) spontaneous delivery. It was a scary one. He did get stuck. I bled a lot. But in the end, we were both healthy and okay. He was a beautiful, beautiful newborn. He weighed 10lbs 1oz, and was 22 inches long, and we were in love.

A month later he got RSV, and maybe because he was big, he was fine--he didn't need a hospital stay like most babies his age might have. Maybe that is why he needed to wait to be born. Maybe not. I don't know. But I knew that he shouldn't be induced, and I knew that even though I was experiencing physical and emotional pains and challenges I didn't know how to face, I had been promised: I could, and I must.

Steve's first month of intern year was in July. It was Trauma Surgery, and I am glad it is over. He was gone for 14 or 16 hour days to work--hard--and then he was home, asleep. During that month it was all on me to hold the house together, help the kids adjust to Daddy being gone, deal with my own loneliness, run all the errands, pay all the bills, and carry this pretty but heavy baby girl--with no break. I potty-trained Charlie, was sent to the hospital for possible pre-term labor (it wasn't--we are lucky), and was then told by my doctor that whenever I started having the insane contractions I was having, that I needed to lay down for as much of the day as possible. For at least two days a week for about another month, the Braxton Hicks came hard, fast, and close together. There were other things, too--nausea, dizziness, weird things. I discovered that I had just enough energy to get us all safely through a normal week where nothing crazy happened. We had one of those. :)

It was interesting to see how quickly those two thoughts came back to me in that month.

The first discouraged self-doubt: I cannot. I cannot: Take care of my babies, make them feel loved. Take care of my husband, make him feel loved. Take care of myself, our baby-girl-on-the-way, the house, the bills, three square meals, endless piles of laundry and dishes and to-dos.

Then, as I looked around and found myself still in the thick of things, the second thought, the reminder from my Father:

You can, and you must.

There was no one else there to do it, so it was on me. And that was okay. It was not easy or fun, but we ate cereal for dinner on only a couple nights. :) I did not throw up in the grocery store with two children and a pregnant belly in tow. Lovely friends swept in to watch the kids for an hour or two when I needed to just be not-in-charge for a moment. I did the dishes when I could but not when I couldn't, and let the laundry sit washed-but-unfolded for days (probably weeks) as we picked just the clothes we needed out of the piles. :) I cried a lot, but when I was done, I got up and kept going.

I know there will be more days, weeks, months like those. They will come at me hard and fast and I will wonder, for a moment, a day, a month, if I will falter. But I expect the answer will come again, strong and steadfast, underlined now by the testimony of those hard weeks that came before, that I will not. That I not only can, but that I must. We are in the last few weeks of our Juliette-pregnancy and while I am weary and overwhelmed and sometimes just afraid, I've found that thought reverberating through my mind again and again, and it staves off the worry and despair. This too shall pass, the darkness precedes the dawn, you can and you must. And I do and I will. All that I can. And I will be gentle to myself about what I can't. I feel stronger and braver with this knowledge cradled in my hands.

There are big things at work in our small and simple lives, and they are lovely and hard and make the easy, sweet, hand-holding-in-the-sunshine days more beautiful.

They make the darker times more beautiful, too.